(19)
(11) EP 2 131 566 A3

(12) EUROPEAN PATENT APPLICATION

(88) Date of publication A3:
01.09.2010 Bulletin 2010/35

(43) Date of publication A2:
09.12.2009 Bulletin 2009/50

(21) Application number: 09007005.3

(22) Date of filing: 26.05.2009
(51) International Patent Classification (IPC): 
H04N 1/387(2006.01)
(84) Designated Contracting States:
AT BE BG CH CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GB GR HR HU IE IS IT LI LT LU LV MC MK MT NL NO PL PT RO SE SI SK TR
Designated Extension States:
AL BA RS

(30) Priority: 06.06.2008 JP 2008149363

(71) Applicant: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
Tokyo (JP)

(72) Inventor:
  • Kido, Hideyuki
    Otha-ku Tokyo  (JP)

(74) Representative: Weser, Thilo 
Weser & Kollegen Patentanwälte Radeckestrasse 43
81245 München
81245 München (DE)

   


(54) Image processing apparatus and image processing method


(57) An image processing apparatus causes a composite image to be printed, on a recording sheet, as an entry area to be written in by a user. The composite image is formed by superimposing a fixed image on a reference image. The image processing apparatus extracts an image of an area having luminance lower than a predetermined threshold value from an image corresponding to the entry area contained in an image obtained by reading the recording sheet having the entry area that is written in, and the image processing apparatus uses mask data for extracting an image of an area corresponding to the fixed image to perform image extraction.







Search report